


we'll never get free (lamb to the slaughter)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: the odds were never in our favor [5]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 74th Hunger Games, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dark, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mentors, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Victor Katniss, and are the mentors during the 74th games, not of any of the main characters tho, the hargreeves siblings are past victors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-17 19:04:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18104561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: The Seventy Fourth Hunger Games dawns with only a few small deviations from the normal. None too startling for any Capitolite, and probably not for any District citizen either.But for one Victor, though, things are spelling out a very interesting narrative.Five is so young, so small, and despite his obvious lethalness, people keep underestimating him just based on his youth. They think him just a kid, who can't possibly have any mind for politics.But there's a reason why Five's a Victor. He's smart. He recognizes what’s happening when the newest Capitolite stylist turns the female tribute from District 12 into a fire, into a beacon to draw all eyes in. (Even Allison can't compete with that.)The girl who volunteered, from a District that has never produced a volunteer- if she's got any sort of talent to back that spirit up, the Capitol's going to love her. The boy from 12, on the other hand- he has no chance. His interview was a miss and he only got a six in training. But the girl...well, her 11 in training said something.(The Seven's POV on the 74th Hunger Games.)





	we'll never get free (lamb to the slaughter)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [More Deaths Than One Must Die](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876365) by [OfWilsonDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfWilsonDreams/pseuds/OfWilsonDreams). 



> Title is from "Blood in the Water" by Grandson.
> 
>  
> 
> I've had multiple requests for pre-Quell stories about the Hargreeves sibs and I have a couple of stories bouncing around in my head, so here's one of them.
> 
> (Also, Hazel and Cha-Cha are previous Victors as well. Hazel was the winner of the 64th Games, a tribute from District 1, and Cha-Cha was the winner of the 46th Games, a tribute from District 2. They're probably never going to be major characters in this series, so who knows if they'll be mentioned much, but I thought it should be said.)
> 
> Remember, instead of Peeta being Reaped it was a young guy from the Seam named Cliff. Thus, no star-crossed lovers story and no two-Victor rule change. Katniss is still the Victor, but the Games end rather differently than they do in the original canon.
> 
> Also, if anyone wants a timeline of Victors/Games to make sense of this 'verse, I have included an abridged one in the end notes.

_I told her once I wasn’t good at anything._

_She told me survival is a talent._

**- Susanna Kaysen**

 

The Seventy Fourth Hunger Games dawns with only a few small deviations from the normal. None too startling for any Capitolite, and probably not for any District citizen either.

But for one Victor, though, things are spelling out a very interesting narrative.

Five is so young, so small, and despite his obvious lethalness, people keep underestimating him just based on his youth. They think him just a kid, who can't possibly have any mind for politics. In some ways, Five thinks there might be something sweetly sickening about the nary-a-drop-of-cynicism attitude of the Capitolites.

But there's a reason why Five's a Victor. He's smart. He recognizes what’s happening when the newest Capitolite stylist turns the female tribute from District 12 into a fire, into a beacon to draw all eyes in. (Even Allison can't compete with _that_.)

The girl who volunteered, from a District that has never produced a volunteer- if she's got any sort of talent to back that spirit up, the Capitol's going to eat her up. The boy from 12, on the other hand- he has no chance. His interview was a miss and he only got a six in training. But the girl...well, her eleven in training said something.

-

This year Klaus is the main Mentor for the male tribute from Eight- a thin slip of a boy named Trevor who Klaus knows won't last a day. 

And he's right- Trevor makes the stupid mistake of heading to the Cornucopia, and then goes down minutes into the Bloodbath. Well, that wasn't much of a surprise. Five years of being a Mentor has taught Klaus that too many kids make stupid, suicidal decisions in the Games, if only to get their deaths over with quickly.

(Klaus' Games lasted twenty five days, and he was nearly skin and bones by the end of the Games, but he still  _lasted_. He hid in that side tunnel for days as he listened to other tributes being rent apart by mutts and each other, only sneaking out every other night to steal enough food and water to survive off of the Career camp. 

Klaus knows the reason why President Hargreeves has never had him paraded around like Allison or Luther or even Diego is not because he lacked a survival instinct, but because he lacked a killer instinct. He only has one kill to his name, and technically, it was just a mercy kill on the last day of the games. It had gotten down to him and Ilya, the girl from District 6, and while he'd been at least somewhat filled by food, she'd been near death from starvation and dehydration. He'd just had to push her into one of the mutt tunnels and hid in the Cornucopia as she'd died.)

District Eight's female tribute lasts a bit longer, on the other hand, as she actually takes Ben's advice and runs away, into the trees, even managing to snag a bag along the way. Maybe she'll be able to make it a few days-

Then she lights a fucking fire and Klaus just knows she's going down. Oh, well. It's not like they had a chance.

Their female tribute dies, the screen going black, and Klaus stands up with a small sigh. Their tribute lasted long enough for Klaus to make promises that he now has to deliver on.

He goes to the Mentor break room to grab some pills before he goes out to fulfill his promises to whore himself out to those few Capitolites who made the mistake of sponsoring Eight this year.

Here's to another glorious Games.

-

Five’s boy told him that he admired Five for what he did with the mines, and he doesn't have hope for his tributes to win- he's not stupid- but he thinks that Pilal might be able to last a bit longer than District Three tributes usually do.

Wiress has a (fragile, insane) eye on their girl, who has no fucking chance of winning, and maybe not even making it out of the Bloodbath. The girl’s brilliant, but she's half-blind and that's a death-knell in the Arena. Five won't say it aloud, because he'd be seen as disloyal and he has to keep up with at least some measure of politics, but he knows it.

So when he sits down at the screen that will be his home until his tributes die (and even beyond- he never leaves this room during the Games), he's not harboring any false hopes.

Five's never drunk for the Games, but he knows that within a couple of days he'll be spending time with Klaus by the bottle. He knows for a fact that neither of his tributes will win.

-

Allison knows the years that she has the absolute best chance of winning, and this year she doesn’t. This year obviously belongs to the Careers from Two rather than the ones from One. Glimmer is overconfident in her ability with a bow, and has no particular strength in any one area. She’s good at everything, but she stands out at nothing, which is a turn-off for most sponsors. At least Marvel has certain talent with a spear, though he lacks in most other areas. 

Well, at least Glimmer knows how to use her body to attract Sponsors. She’s not as good as Allison was at manipulating people with her beauty and her words, but then again, not many tributes from One are. They don't teach manipulation that much, preferring to focus on trainee's weapons skills, and that's nearly always One's downfall in Games that require survival skills or manipulation in order to survive.

So Allison's tributes don’t realize their weaknesses, but she doesn’t blame them for it. She remembers that overconfidence, going into the Games. It’s an overconfidence that only death or time in the Capitol can cause a Career to lose. These tributes- they don’t have her experience, her cynicism, her eight years navigating the Capitol and watching from the Mentor side of things as tribute after tribute dies. Hazel won three years before her, but as for now she is the newest Victor from One. 

Glimmer's early death isn't really a surprise. Her death at the hands of a clever trap from the 12 girl is, though.

Allison's used to cleverness from the tributes from the earlier outlier Districts. Five and Vanya, for example, she never underestimated as tributes. Klaus came as a bit of a shock, if she's being honest, but the fact that he didn't use his cleverness to fight but rather than just outlast was not too much of a shock.

A girl from twelve, though, pulling the trackerjacker move to kill two Careers? That's definitely a surprise. That's a killer instinct that the far outlier tributes generally lack, especially combined with Katniss' cleverness.

Allison can appreciate it, though. She herself won her Games in an unorthodox way compared to how her District usually wins. She won by cunning as much as by her talent with a kukri knife, good as she was with her weapon.

-

Five knows from the moment that Pilal joins up with the Careers instead of taking them out that he is fucked. There has never been a case in the Hunger Games where an outlier that has joined up with the Career pack has become Victor since the tenth Hunger Games, before the Academies in One, Two, and Four really kicked into high gear.

Cha-Cha whistles. "My boy's gonnna take yours out, kid," she says, and Five knows it but he doesn't have to like it.

He ends up staying in the room to watch the Games after Pilal gets impaled on the District Two Male's sword after the girl on fire fucks up his mines.

It’s kind of a sick curiosity, Five knows, but he always stays until the end of the Games. He wants to see how long his friends’ tributes can last, see the ways that _his_ tributes can improve their chances in the Arena.

And so he's there in the room with Haymitch, Vanya, Luther, Cha-Cha, and Chaff when Rue dies and the girl on fire gives her a funeral, complete with flowers, a song, and a salute, and it's the first time Five is aware of that a tribute provided a memorial during the games. There have sometimes been tears when an ally died, or a post-Games quiet memorial such as Luther's cats, but during the Game? When a single hesitation out in the open like this can cause a tribute's death? It's unheard of.

Five knows that if Katniss wins, the people of Panem won't forget this tribute. They won't let the Girl on Fire burn out. She will become a symbol for rebellion and revolt, for whatever that's worth.

And even if she does...something was sparked, here, that can't be easily forgotten. Katniss was the main focus of the Games, if only for a little while, and all of Panem saw her memorial.  
  
-

Diego knows that his tributes have no chance. A limp leg on the boy and a skinny, starved fourteen-year-old girl- District 10 never churns out successful tributes, but this is even worse than usual.

He's used to it, though. District 10 churns out outlier upon outlier, kids that have little to no chance of survival. Of the eleven Games he's Mentored for, only two tributes from his District have made it past the Bloodbath. The girl tribute from the 69th Games had made it to the fifth day and the Final Eight, managing to create a symbol system that had helped her navigate the cave system, but then she'd fucked up and wandered down the wrong tunnel, only to be torn up by clicking mutts. The boy tribute from the 72nd had made it to the third day, only to be beheaded by a Career tribute from Four. He didn't even make it past the half-way mark.

Diego comes from a District of the slaughtered, where they send kids into the Games with the expectation that they will be slaughtered just like the animals they raise. Diego knows very well that as a slaughterer, he is the exception to the rule. He knows that he's going to grieve when Cielo and Selena die, but that doesn't mean he can't see it coming.

But then Cielo, his boy tribute, runs away from the Cornucopia and starts to last. He hides in the treetops, under a small blanket he'd managed to snag at the edge of the Cornucopia, and only sneaks down at night to grab food. He survives on nuts, berries, and insects, and he starts to outlast everybody.

Cielo lasts past the bloodbath, Ben and Klaus' last tribute, four Careers, and the girl from Eleven. He makes it into the Final Six, which for a boy with a limp is a fucking miracle. Diego almost, kind of, starts to have something approaching hope as Cielo climbs back up into his perch to sleep for the night. He even scrapes together enough sponsor money- gathered by his fellow Mentor Risa (Victor of the 54th Hunger Games)- to send the boy an empty canteen to store the water in so he has to take less trips down to get water.

It all comes crashing down in the morning, though, when Cielo climbs back down to get food and Luther's boy sticks his spear into Cielo's back before leaving him to die a slow death from blood loss.

As the screen goes black, Diego doesn't even sigh or shrug. He just gets up from his seat and heads into the break room, where he finds Allison, Ben, a few other Mentors eating and talking quietly. Klaus is missing, but he often is during the Games, after his tributes are gone. (Probably sleeping with the Capitolites he managed to wring Sponsorships out of.)

"Your boy gone too?" Ben asks, looking up at Diego, and he nods. Ben presses his lips together into a thin line and then holds up his plate. "You want some food?"

There's no reassuring words, no apologies, no attempts at comfort. And in a way, that makes Diego feel a little better. The fact that Ben understands exactly where Diego is- that everyone in this room understands where he is- is kinda comforting in itself.

"Sure," Diego says, and heads over to the buffet table. He's going to cry later, he knows, but for now, he's just going to eat. 

-

Luther watches every Reaping, and by the time he steps off the train, he has every tribute’s name memorized, all their stats known. (Whoever dies, he's going to remember them.) He knows the odds of who's going to survive. Regardless of their potential, he knows even in the best years he only has the chance to send one of his tributes home.

Luther's not as brilliant as Five or Vanya, not as clever as Allison, but he's not a fool. He knows his tributes' weaknesses, as any good Career does. He knows that though Clove has a ruthless, sadistic streak that will serve her well in the Games, Clove's been pissed about Katniss' 11 and she might turn that into something personal. Thus, when Clove dies at the Feast, he's not surprised. She had slowed down to taunt Katniss, after all, and hesitating during the Games only spells weakness.

What he  _is_ surprised at, though, is the fact that Thresh shows Katniss mercy because of Rue. In the Hunger Games, you can't leave any room for guilt or mercy. Feelings like those are for after the Games, once you're the Victor. (Luther's beloved cats could definitely testify to that.)

Cato, on the other hand- well, that's a tribute he pegged as having a pretty decent chance of winning. He's arrogant, yes, but he's got a drive and a talent to back up his confidence. If he can prevent himself from making any stupid mistakes, hesitating before a kill, then he can probably take the second District 2 victory since Luther's win in the 65th Games.

But only if he's careful, which Luther's not sure he's capable of being. Cato is a weapon of brute force, not one of finesse. And in an arena like this, designed to cater a little more to the sneaky and the quiet and those who can survive in a forest setting rather than just by slitting open throats- Cato's one weakness could prove to be his undoing.

-

This is Vanya’s first year as a Mentor, and out of the four living Victors from Five, she’s already up for her turn in one of the main Mentor seats during the Games.

Her tribute, Jay, didn’t work in the power plants. To be honest, Vanya’s pretty sure that Jay has the same background that Klaus did before his games- she’s an orphan who moonlights as a thief to save her family. Vanya knows that if the Peacekeepers found out, Jay's family would pay for it and she'd probably be whipped into unconsciousness, but if it get Jay out of the Arena, then that's all Vanya could ask for.

Despite knowing District Five's near-zero chances of producing back-to-back Victors, Vanya can't help but hope. The idea that District Five could have two straight years of extra food, that Jay could be the one going on a Victory Tour- Vanya can't help but want that.

And Jay defies every fucking odd for District Five- commonly outlier- tributes. She survives past all but one Career, makes it into the Final Eight and then the Final Four, makes it to the point where hope feels almost savagely real. Vanya could pull off the first back-to-back outlier win in the history of the Games.

But then Jay dies, falling to the forest floor with berry stains on her mouth. Her vital stats plummet on Vanya's screen, and then the screen goes black as the cannon booms.

(If Vanya had been here for longer, she would have known how to pick out the signs of a suicidal tribute. She would have known the quiet gleam in the eyes, the fact that Jay has a keen knowledge of plants and knows what berries are poisonous, the quiet smile on Jay's face as she ate the nightlock berries from Katniss' bag.

But this is Vanya's first Games, and so she doesn't.)

Vanya sits back in her chair, heart in her mouth. Jay had been so close to the win, and then she was lying dead on the ground.

She doesn't know how long she sits there before she feels a hand on her shoulder. She looks up to find that it's Allison, gaze as understanding as it was when she congratulated Vanya after she received the Victor's crown last year. "It's over. Come get something to eat."

Allison isn't exactly cruel, but she's not exactly gentle either, and Vanya almost wants to puke after everything that's happened. How do you get to the point where you can view death so casually?

Vanya knows she's not innocent. She knows she caused twelve deaths, to varying degrees, in her Games. But she didn't have to watch those people die in real time. When she saw them perish for the first time, it was during her Victor's interviews. That vague knowing didn't hit her very hard during the Games- it hit afterward. Now, though, Jay is dead because Vanya didn't send her the right food so that way she didn't have to steal from Katniss Everdeen's pack while she was hunting.

So Vanya stands up on weak legs and follows Allison back into the Mentor break room.

-

Klaus stumbles back into the Mentor break room sometime after Vanya's tribute goes down but before anyone in the Final Three dies. His eyelids are heavy with alcohol and his breath stinks of some pill he took before fucking some Capitolite yesterday. He halts when he sees Vanya and Ben slumped against each other on the sofa, curled up under a blanket. "What the fuck?" he mutters quietly.

"Bad first Games," Diego says from his quiet position in the corner of his room. He's sitting there, playing some stupid electronic game on his tablet while monitoring the Game up on the screen in the middle of the coffee table, just like a good little Victor. "Her girl tribute almost made it."

Klaus blinks. Vanya is so new compared to all of them. Even Five, still a child, still technically younger than her, has had two years longer than she has in the Capitol. This was her first Games as a Mentor, and there's no way she could have braced herself for watching her tributes die like that, knowing that she is indirectly responsible for them as their Mentor.

Fuck- he should have been here for her-

But Klaus couldn't have been. President Hargreeves would have gone after someone else that Klaus loves if he had missed out on his meetings for his job being the Capitolites' fucktoy- Ben, Diego, Allison, Luther, Five, or even Vanya herself.

(Klaus is stuck in a Catch-22, and he knows there's no way out. He tried getting out, just the once, and the man he loved died because of his attempt to escape.)

So Klaus just shrugs. "Alright." He then plops down onto one of the sofas opposite Vanya and Ben, remembering his one sober year. Seeing how peaceful they look in sleep, even during the Hunger Games- it reminds him of Dave before he died, how he was always so kind and unplagued by nightmares.

Diego meets his gaze from across the room. "Can't wait to do this again next year, right?" Klaus jokes, and Diego just rolls his eyes before giving Klaus a small, understanding smile.

"Same time, same place, next year," he agrees.

-

When it comes down to the final three- Cato, Katniss, and Thresh- the only four Mentors left in the room are Haymitch, Luther, Chaff, and Five, who refuses to leave until the Victor appears. He's been sleeping in the main Mentor room for days now, rather than heading back for drinks while the tributes are asleep.

Normally many of the Mentors pile back into the room for the final throwdown, but it's two in the morning and no one expects it to get down to only two just yet. Cato and Thresh have been moving around the fields for seven hours now, and Katniss is somewhere in the middle of the woods. The final showdown is due to probably happen some time in the morning, so there should be at least a few more hours left until the Victor is announced.

Then Cato kills Thresh in the fields. He then turns around to stalk back into the woods and is instantly cut down by an arrow from the sky. A cannon booms, and Katniss Everdeen is announced as the Victor of the 74th Hunger Games.

It turns out that Katniss Everdeen had taken after her ally and had silently made her way through the treetops to the edge of the field, where she'd sat in wait until one of the men had cut the other down.

A pretty ingenious strategy, Ben's gotta admit, when Five comes into the break room and tells them. She'd kept the element of surprise, letting stronger guys kill each other until she was the only one left. Not bad for the girl from the poorest District in Panem, the first ever female tribute from her District.

-

When the Games end, the Mentors all end up in the food room, all twenty-three of them. Soon enough there will be another Mentor from Twelve, and though some Districts may trade out their Mentors, there will now be at least two Mentors from every District to fill the room.

There's a comfortable silence in the room- comfortable not because of any sort of joy or excitement, but more just a comfort from knowing that these are twenty-three people who understand each others' backgrounds far more than any one else could. A cold sort of comfort, the same that came when Klaus joked about next year or Ben handed Diego some food. It's a sense of the returning cycle, of the knowledge that no matter what, they will always be welcoming one more member to their ranks after watching twenty-three more children die.

"There's another one of us, now," Luther says quietly, and under any other circumstances- in a party, in the audience of an interview, on a train- Klaus or Five would make a sarcastic quip in response.

But here, now, they don't say a sarcastic word. Instead, they wait for Katniss to be airlifted back to the Capitol and all polished up, her scars disappearing and styled to look like one of them, not a desperate child but a killer. (Because that's what she is, now. She's a Victor, a killer, a monster, and all of Panem know her as such.)

"Good job, Haymitch," Allison says instead, and all the Victors turn to look at the mentor from 12, who for once in his career as a mentor isn't drunk. He's stone-cold sober, and though there are dark circles under his eyes he just won District 12 their second ever Games- the first of his career as a Mentor.

And Haymitch meets their gazes with a steady one of his own.

-

When Katniss Everdeen gives the Victor's interview, she is dressed in a dress of candlelight, a soft glow to her outfit and skin that belies the murderous acts she just completed in the Games. Instead, it seems tailored to remind people not only of her status as the girl on fire, but also of her kindness to Rue and her sister.

(Allison's gotta hand it to District 12's newest stylist- he definitely knows what the fuck he's doing. Allison remembers her own dress, dark red and rich, reminiscent of the color of blood. That had cemented her as a killer, a classic Victor, while Katniss' serves to humanize her.)

Katniss speaks of her sister, and she doesn't have Allison's talent for emotional manipulation or politics, but she does well enough. She's honest and a little rough but she's been the underdog since the beginning and so that's easily forgiven.

(Caesar barely mentions her District partner, killed in the bloodbath, and Allison's pretty thankful. Katniss doesn't need the reminder, or the stumbling block in her victory speech.)

-

The next day, the previous Victors all stand in the front row of the audience as President Hargreeves places the crown on Katniss' head. She looks ahead, gaze piercing, and her dress isn't like her interview dress. No, this time it's a blended red and black, with a subtle gold folded into the pleats and folds that resembles embers when she moves. She is every inch a Victor, every inch the girl on fire.

And Five, still the youngest Victor, stares up at her and knows that things have shifted. That girl in her dress of embers- she's going to set something ablaze. All that's left to see is what.

**Author's Note:**

> Victor Timeline-  
> 58th Games: Ben (District 8)  
> 59th Games: Gloss (District 1)  
> 60th Games: District 6 Female (The Morphling)  
> 61st Games: District 2 Female  
> 62nd Games: District 9 Male  
> 63rd Games: Diego (District 10)  
> 64th Games: Hazel (District 1)  
> 65th Games: Luther (District 2)  
> 66th Games: Finnick (District 4)  
> 67th Games: Allison (District 1)  
> 68th Games: District 4 Male  
> 69th Games: Klaus (District 8)  
> 70th Games: Annie (District 4)  
> 71st Games: Five (District 3)  
> 72nd Games: Johanna (District 7)  
> 73rd Games: Vanya (District 5)
> 
>  
> 
> Alright, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this! Comments are always appreciated, both the positive and the constructive criticism.


End file.
